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  • Will AI boost your job, or lose your job? | You and AI News #4

Will AI boost your job, or lose your job? | You and AI News #4

Is AI a bright light at the end of the tunnel? Or an oncoming train? See the good, bad, and great of today’s AI in this issue.

In this week’s edition - Ep #4 “Productivity boost or opportunity lost”

Read time: 5 mins

  1. Where is AI boosting productivity? 🚀
    AI is appearing in every tool and device we use at home and at work. 

  2. Where is AI killing opportunity? 💀
    From interns to innovators: who might be the losers to AI?

  3. 8 reasons why OpenAI’s GPTs are a game changer for us all.
    GPTs are easy to make, custom, and productized ChatGPTs you can focus on a knowledge domain and then share.
    BONUS: Visual Weather Artist GPT

Where is AI boosting productivity? 🚀

AI is appearing in every tool and device we use at home and at work.

There’s no going back now!

AI is a fast-moving ratchet mechanism.

Or is it Pandora’s Box?

One thing we know for sure is that it’s going to affect us all in one way or another.

AI is a ratchet mechanism

But it’s not all good… 😟

OpenAI blames DDoS attack for ongoing ChatGPT outage. 🌩️

ChatGPT is popular with 100 million users, of course the hackers are interested. If you rely on ChatGPT for work: what do you do when it goes down?

Other generative AIs have different (missing?) features and results. Different AIs are not the same. See the OpenAI’s status report.

As OpenAI release features, is ChatGPT getting worse? 📉

Here are some complaints about the latest version of ChatGPT 4 Turbo. Regular users have recently complained of “regressive behaviours” with worse results.

Specifically, now that ChatGPT decides which mode to use (e.g. browse or DALL-E 3?), it often gets it wrong. Previously, the user controlled which mode to use.

However, one of the OpenAI folks says it might take some time to improve:

Both the outage and the regression are timely reminders of where we are on the evolutionary path of AI: it’s still early days.

Opportunity Lost?

Where is AI killing opportunity? 💀

From interns to innovators: who might be the losers to AI?

"From an AI user perspective, it’s truer than ever that it’s the fast that eat the slow, not the big that eat the small. However, from an AI vendor perspective, the big vendors like OpenAI are moving faster than the small vendors and eating them as they fold innovations into the platform, at velocity.”

Steve Chambers, CxO

The big AI platforms are fast, and growing, and swallowing up, or pushing aside, the small, niche, indie makers and innovators. 

Platforms like OpenAI and Google are making AI tools more accessible but potentially stifling innovation by overshadowing smaller, independent AI applications. Or is there enough room for everyone?

We’ve seen how AI can boost productivity for people, but it’s also becoming clear that for all the winners there will also be losers:

  • Will AI end indie hacker dreams?
    Many small early-innovator indie hackers provided "plugins” and services on the OpenAI platform: now OpenAI does it inside the platform.

  • Freelancers and UpWorkers?
    For the lower-skilled and low-cost freelancers they are seeing fewer opportunities as clients get-there-faster using AI. However, a bright light is that the AI-generated work is often not as good as freelancers, so the answer here is for freelancers to up their game and quality.

  • Data analysts?
    AI can ingest many sources now, a job that data analysts used to do. AI can read charts, create charts, and calculate all kinds of models AND write the code to do it. One “moat” for analysts inside companies is that companies don’t want to expose their data to “public” AIs. But this moat is shrinking — more on that in the next edition.

  • Internships?
    I started my career as a graduate trainee/intern. I did low-level programming and learnt my craft. If AI can do the low-level programming, is that opportunity gone? Hopefully internships don’t disappear and instead transform into something that benefits / works with AI?

8 reasons why OpenAI’s GPTs are a game changer for everyone.

GPTs are easy to make, custom, and productized ChatGPTs you can focus on a knowledge domain and then share.

You can now create custom GPTs that combine instructions, extra knowledge, and any combination of skills. Think of bringing a job specification to life.

8 reasons why this is a big deal! Taken from OpenAI’s own page on GPTs.

1. GPTs let you customize ChatGPT for a specific purpose.

GPTs now automate the process of customizing ChatGPT, making it easier for users to tailor it to their specific needs without manual effort.

2. The best GPTs will be invented by the community.

Community members, including educators and enthusiasts, can create and share GPTs without needing coding skills, democratizing AI tool creation.

3. The GPT Store is rolling out later this month.

Users can create and share GPTs, with a new GPT Store launching soon to feature and monetize these creations, enhancing accessibility and variety in AI tools.

4. We built GPTs with privacy and safety in mind.

ChatGPT ensures user data privacy and control, with robust systems to review GPTs against usage policies and prevent harmful content.

5. Developers can connect GPTs to the real world.

GPTs can integrate with external data and perform real-world tasks, like managing emails or facilitating e-commerce, through custom actions and API integrations.

6. Enterprise customers can deploy internal-only GPTs.

Businesses can create custom GPTs for specific functions, enhancing productivity and aligning with their unique needs.

7. We want more people to shape how AI behaves.

By involving the community in AI development, GPTs aim to create a diverse range of tools and foster safer, more aligned AI.

8. We’ve made ChatGPT Plus fresher and simpler to use.

ChatGPT Plus now offers updated information and a streamlined user experience, consolidating various AI models and functionalities into a single, user-friendly platform.

BONUS! Visual Weather Artist GPT

Is asked Alex Volkov’s “Visual Weather Artist” GPT to draw the Leeds weather at 1300 today. I got a beautiful picture of Leeds Town Hall in the sun (rare sunny day here) and a fun poem, too!

Leeds on a sunny Friday at 1300

In Leeds, where the skies are so clear, At one in the afternoon, bright and dear, 47°F, the sun does gleam, Casting over the city a warm sunbeam.

Gentle winds at five mph flow, Through streets where the happy faces glow, Sunny skies, not a cloud in sight, Leeds basks in the daylight, so bright.

In this charming city, the time stands still, Under the sun's warm, comforting thrill, In Leeds, at this hour, so serene, The beauty of a sunny day, clearly seen.

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